Jordan Zivitz's favourite music of 2013

1. Patty Griffin: American Kid. As warm a voice as you’ll find in contemporary folk, Griffin wrote much of American Kid as a response to her father’s final days. But most of these intensely sensitive songs could have been composed for any soul in search of solace and understanding. Griffin’s most compassionate album, which is really saying something.

2. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Push the Sky Away; Metropolis, March 22. With the departure of senior adviser Mick Harvey and the dissolution of the feral Bad Seeds offshoot Grinderman, Cave could have headed in any number of directions. He ended up conjuring a hushed but unsettled waking dream unlike anything else in his repertoire, shot through with a ghostly chill. The clenched discipline of the album loosened in concert, with his Metropolis firestorm playing to a confirmed strength: physical, raging catharsis.

3. Bruno Mars, Bell Centre, July 5. Immaculate professionalism isn’t often accompanied by absolute jubilation, but Mars and his white-hot band were possessed by an ecstatic energy while remaining in complete control. From the multimillion-dollar stage to the singer’s multimillion-dollar smile, it was hard to imagine a more joyous pop show.

4. Okkervil River: “Down Down the Deep River.” Will Sheff’s love of language has rarely been more apparent than on this standout from his band’s most immediately inviting album, The Silver Gymnasium. Backed by an infectious ’80s sunshine-soul soundtrack, Sheff’s intricate jigsaw narrative is pieced together from the terrors and comforts of childhood in equal measure. When he cries “we can never go back — we can only remember,” he could be relieved or in mourning.

5. Colin Stetson: New History Warfare Vol. 3 — To See More Light. No loops, no overdubs, no matter. The Montreal-based avant-garde saxophonist’s technique is supernatural, but with every collection of (mostly) solo pieces, his compositional skills grow more sophisticated. It’s a compliment to say that the methodology behind his sighs and screams is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

6. Julianna Barwick: Nepenthe. So ethereal that they make Sigur Rós sound earthy, Barwick’s incantations and meditations come from a rarefied realm that few artists have accessed. The layered celestial vocals and soft-focus orchestrations can cast an unbreakable spell for listeners who value mood as much as melody.

7. Simple Minds, Metropolis, Oct. 21. A concert with a genuine sense of event. More than a quarter-century on from their last Montreal appearance, Jim Kerr and company would have been greeted with rapture just for showing up. As it was, they were intent on proving their vitality after a comically long absence. Mission accomplished, from an arena-sized Waterfront to a wired New Gold Dream.

8. Anna Calvi: One Breath. The incredible poise of her 2011 self-titled debut is maintained, but where that album was coloured in the most intimate shades of desire, the followup expands Calvi’s world. Now equally likely to be icy or fiery, spectral or carnal, the British singer can still stop hearts no matter how she bends her whisper-to-a-cyclone vocals.

9. New Order plays Joy Division, Osheaga Music and Arts Festival, Aug. 4. Their entire neon-lit set was a highlight of the long weekend, and was as contemporary as it was nostalgic. But the festival’s most emotional gut-punch came when Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris artfully honoured their beginnings, liberating a trio of Joy Division songs from the lingering morbid fascination surrounding Ian Curtis’s death.

10. Sarah Slean, Club Soda, June 29. Featuring eight string players who animated the magnificent symphonic songs from 2011’s Land and Sea and wove themselves seamlessly into pieces from farther back in the catalogue, Slean’s elegant jazz-fest show was deeply committed even by the standards of an artist who has never believed in half measures.

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